I am often asked by guests how a Londoner such as myself came to be living in Thenay, an unassuming picturesque village in the Loire Valley

teaching English in the village catholic Lycèe and performing as a violinist. Or the hidden question; what motivated you? happiness? love? despair?

My story begins with a born yearning to connect with people beyond the normal social niceties. My father taught me to be curious and creative and my mother and my grandmother taught me to work hard and to value education. However, the truth was evasive in my childhood with several forced moves, changes of schools and eventually the disappearance of my father who re-surfaced in America under a different name. Driven by the need for absolute truth I turned to Christianity and in so doing, found an honest Christian man who wanted to marry me.

No longer in each other’s lives, the marriage with God and the Christian man is now a distant happy memory. But I have not given up the search for spirituality, for generosity, for trust in relationships and a yearning for a deeper connection with humanity and nature. It is now to music, to the arts, to the French culture, to my reading and studying, to the beauty of the nature around me and to an attempt to remain open and curious that drives me forward.